Try Again
by Tefnut
Summary: Aliens find how to best hurt a linguist. Complete.
1. Part 1

**Title**: Try Again  
**Author**: Tefnut  
**Posted**: February 2005  
**Summary**: Aliens find how to best hurt a linguist.  
**Genre**: Action/Adventure, Drama  
**Spoilers**: Takes place during Season 3. Spoilers for Out Of Mind (Season 2); Legacy, Jolinar's Memories (Season 3).  
**Rating & Warnings**: PG-13  
**Pairing**: None  
**Size**: 16000 words  
**Disclaimer**: The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-1, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.

**Jackal**, I want to thank you. You did a great job at editing my writing and pointing out inconsistencies. My style has improved tremendously thanks to you.

* * *

_Try Again_, by Tefnut - Part 1 

The man leered at the woman in the brown dress. He whispered four names in her ear.

"I am not impressed," she said. "This information was easy to get."

The man in the grey tunic sniggered. She was right, of course. He'd studied them, prying into their minds with only the tiniest dot of light. They hadn't noticed, and he hadn't encountered any resistance. Not even from the Jaffa. "Times have changed."

And it was true. Their home had been unvisited for centuries. Maybe the war was over. Grey hoped it was, even though Brown kept reminding him, with this bitterness in her voice that he hated, that there was no way to be sure.

So they kept on doing what they did best. Being guardians. They were good at that. Thanks to them, none of their people had died for a long time. All things considered, none of them had lived, either. The grey man often wondered if this was not worse than death itself. "Maybe the time has come for new changes."

The woman scowled at him before returning her attention to the room. "This one!"

Grey stared at the man she'd pointed at, searching for what was eliciting such a reaction from his partner. The stranger's body was very similar to the others', as was his clothing. From all the brain patterns Grey had scanned before, his differed no more than they should, considering that no individuals were exactly the same. To the hidden man, he didn't look special, but Brown designated him again and declared, "This one has to die."

—

"Quit the glaring already!" said the linguist.

Jack snarled something very crude back at him. Sam sighed and walked away from her two irate colleagues. They'd been at each other's throats almost from the beginning of this mission, all because of one of the colonel's bad puns in the briefing room. Daniel had overreacted. Sam understood how he felt about being mocked in front of General Hammond, but surely he knew the Colonel wasn't ill-intentioned. Didn't he?

With nothing better to do, she sat on one of the stone benches against the wall of the small square room. Light poured in from rectangular openings just below the ceiling, casting strong shadows on the floor. Sam had a direct view of a set of statues of fully clothed men and women. Bright patches of colour, often red, were still visible on some of the draped clothing, but most of the paint had faded into murky browns. The vast majority of the sculptures had been decapitated.

Sam rubbed her neck. The Colonel, who had finally left Daniel to his deciphering, was venting his anger by pacing in front of the entrance. Keeping watch on this side of the temple was supposed to be Teal'c's job. Sam noted, amused, how the big man had moved to the back wall as soon as the Colonel had stepped into his zone. She'd probably have acted the same way.

She didn't think anybody would come through the front opening anyway, and felt much better knowing she was not alone in keeping an eye on the ornate door Daniel was trying to unlock. Heavily embellished with vines and volutes, it blended with the adjoining façade. The sculptures covered the walls as if they had been deliberately placed to conceal the door. Sam had only detected it because the inside of the room looked too small compared to the outside structure.

Daniel had regained his composure. Sam smiled at the way he was muttering to himself, scribbling in his notebook without looking away from the wall. Sam felt that she'd be writhing in pain under the intensity of his scrutiny, were she one of these sinuous lines of text.

"It doesn't make sense," Daniel said. "Bored. Wrinkle. Mush?"

He took a couple of steps backwards. Lips parted in concentration, Daniel swept the entire wall with his gaze. He was playing with his pen, jiggling it between his fingers. His whole attitude screamed that he was about to make one of the intuitive leaps Sam admired so much.

"Come and look at this," Daniel said.

Teal'c and Sam exchanged a look. Slowly, she stood and walked the few paces between them.

Before she could reach him, a white light flooded the room. Sam heard a buzz and passed out.

—

"You see! I told you he was dangerous." Brown crossed her arms on her stomach. The look of contempt on her face angered Grey. It angered him even more to admit that she'd been right. He would have bet that the woman was more dangerous than this man. He had detected hints of a previous blending with a Goau'ld in her brain. She was bright, too.

"We need to do a thorough analysis of his thought patterns," she added.

Dissection, electrical stimulation, chemical analysis. He was familiar with the process. "Too smart for his own good, this boy."

"I'm not happy about that either."

"Get that smirk off your face, and I might even believe you!" To be honest, Grey didn't care much about the fate of the young stranger either. That scared him. When had he lost his empathy? Why hadn't he noticed?

He glared at the old woman. This couldn't be the person he'd chosen to live this excuse for a life with. Yet, he remembered he had enjoyed her company. They had talked about love, hope, and patience until the small hours, and nothing could have stopped them, not even the perspective that this would last forever.

She wouldn't have sentenced this man to death so readily back then.

Brown placed a trembling hand on the unconscious man's forehead. She brushed a short strand of hair from his face. "Fine. If you show me another way, we'll spare him."

Grey acquiesced. He had to come up with an idea, and a damn good one at that. His own soul was at stake.

—

Jack slitted his eyes open for the second time. The white butterflies didn't disappear. What the hell had caused this hangover? Oh yeah. Daniel. Maybe trying to drink him under the table after a heated arguing session had been a bad plan. They'd both lost, and it hadn't been pretty. One week later, they were still healing their wounds, even now that they were off world.

Ah. He didn't drink alcohol on missions unless it was called for on some ceremonial occasion. This was not a hangover. It was probably worse than that.

Jack heard a moan. It was a sad sound. As he sat up, he comprehended that it had come from him. Holding his head between his hands he waited for the pain to recede. Eventually the pounding slowed, allowing Jack to take a careful look at his surroundings.

Oh yeah, he remembered now. The temple of the beheaded statues. He envied their fate. At least they didn't need Tylenol. Jack quickly assessed his body for injuries. As far as he could tell, he didn't have a scratch on him.

The statues were silhouetted against the pale walls, lit by the orange rays of the setting sun. Jack flicked his flashlight on. They'd been unconscious for seven hours according to his watch. Peering around the dusty room, Jack searched for his teammates. He remembered Daniel and Teal'c standing near the secret door and Carter sitting on a bench. He could discern three big lumps on the floor back there, near the wall. They were immobile. "Roll call, kids. Carter?"

One of the lumps coughed. "Sir. I'm alive I think."

"Teal'c? Daniel?"

Moans answered. Jack propped himself up against a statue and caught a glimpse of the front wall. He blinked. Then he looked again. "Shit!"

The doorway had disappeared. It had been replaced by a solid-looking wall.

"Colonel?"

The weak voice of his second in command drew his attention back to his team. He'd worry about an exit later.

Jack gulped and pulled away from the statue. He shambled awkwardly toward the back of the room, wincing as his head throbbed harder with every stride. The figures of his friends became clearer. Carter was pressing her hands against her eyes, while Teal'c was sitting near Daniel. The latter was lying on his back, shaking.

"Daniel Jackson is unwell, O'Neill."

"How bad is it?" Without waiting for an answer, Jack knelt near Daniel. He was foaming and quivering, wide open eyes staring at the ceiling. He had lost his glasses. His right pupil was extremely dilated, whereas the left one was reduced to a barely visible pinpoint. Jack searched in vain for a difference in lighting that could have explained this phenomenon.

Blood was leaking from Daniels left temple.

"Daniel?" Carter gently wiped his face with an antiseptic towelette. "Colonel, he's been wounded. If you look closely, there's a pinprick on his temple."

Jack didn't look. He was watching his friend's eyes slowly returning to normal. He didnt have any energy to spare worrying about what tool the aliens had used to mess with his head. "Memory device?" he asked nonetheless, hoping they had just scanned him for information.

"I doubt it, Sir. The Tok'ra memory device leaves a round mark as well as a pinprick where it touches the skin. There's nothing like that. Besides, it doesn't cause fits."

Jack sighed. Daniel seemed to be stabilizing. He grabbed Jack's sleeve and followed the narrow light Carter was pointing at his eyes. He was clearly aware of his surroundings. If they were lucky, they'd get off with nothing more than a fright. "Hey, buddy."

"Jack."

"Yeah, it's me."

Daniel sat up and winced. Sam grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. "I'm going to ask you a few questions," she said. "You okay?"

"Fine."

"What's your name?"

It took him an awful long time for him to answer. "Daniel."

Jack stood. While Sam pursued the examination, he examined the scribbles Daniel had tried to decipher. It taught him nothing new. The door was as shut as it had ever been. He tapped against the wall. "Hard stuff," he grunted. "I'd say we blast it open, but we don't have the C4." He strode back to the front of the temple where the doorway had gone A.W.O.L. and was forced to conclude that they were well and truly stuck.

Teal'c was circling around the two scientists, his gait unsteady. Everything was silent but for Carter and Daniel's quiet conversation. Jack snorted. Conversation was too big a word to describe their exchange. If Carter's questions were basic - What's your age? Where are we? - Daniel's answers were beyond dull. One word, one name, and sometimes nothing at all. That was all the linguist could come up with.

Jack didn't need a degree in neurology to sense that something terribly wrong had happened to the kid. "Stop it, Carter. I don't want to hear any more of it."

"Yes, Sir."

He started packing Daniel's discarded equipment. His pen. His notebook. His glasses, lying in the rubble of a statue. Jack blew the dust off them and slid them back on Daniel's nose. He then picked up the handcam, turned it back on, and reviewed the last records. He recalled Daniel filming the wall. Unfortunately, he had stopped a while before the incident.

"Do any of you have an idea of what happened?" Jack asked.

"I don't know, Sir. He called us. I think he had deciphered the writing, or at least he was on the right track. Then there was this light and" Sam waved the air.

"Did he touch anything?"

Teal'c's voice echoed from behind a column. "Daniel Jackson was standing at a distance from the wall. He was not within reach of it." He walked to the ornate door. "The aggressors left no footprints, O'Neill."

"Which means they can fly, or that they bagged us from far away. OK, Danny, if you know a way out" Jack pointed at the front wall. Daniel looked at him and shook his head.

"He doesn't understand you, Sir."

Daniel turned to face the writing. "I shall not try again."

"What did you say?"

"I shall not try again, or they will kill me."

That was, what? Ten words? Much more than what he'd been able to say since he'd come to. The dire message had been delivered bluntly, with none of the inflections that characterized Daniel's speech. The aliens had been using him as a cheap recording device, Jack realised as he helped Daniel up. They would pay. He would make sure of that.

—

"It worked," said Grey.

"The child makes a good parrot."

Grey clenched his fists. His partner's haughty demeanour started to grate on his nerves. She hadn't even admitted her defeat. Of course, Grey's victory was nothing to be proud of. He had reduced the young man's brilliant mind to a mass of silence and frustration. For the second time in a few hours he wondered what made a life worth living.

He hoped that he hadn't pushed the stranger's limits so far that he had killed his drive for self-preservation.

"What now? What if they come back?"

"Then we'll reconsider our options."

—

Sam was absorbing Daniel's words when she heard stone rubbing against stone. She ran to the front of the temple, and arrived just in time to witness the disappearance of a portion of the wall in the ground. The doorway was back. With a finger, she traced the tiny lines that indicated the limits between the real floor and the trap door. She castigated herself for not having noticed it earlier. Maybe they wouldn't have run into trouble so carelessly if she had. "Colonel"

"Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. I got the message. Time to move, campers."

Teal'c picked up Daniel's rucksack from the ground. "Allow me to carry this for you, Daniel Jackson."

"No." As if his retort was not enough, he grabbed a strap of his pack and tore it from Teal'c's grasp. As soon as he'd put it back on, which he did without bothering with the clips, he rushed past Sam and left the temple.

"Daniel, wait for us," she called.

How she wished for an answer! Instead he just fled. She started running after him, followed by the Colonel and Teal'c. The gravelled path Daniel hurried along gleamed white in the moonlight. Sam struggled to catch up to Daniel, and then to stay at his side. Daniel was fixated on reaching the dark shape of the Stargate, and nothing she said could slow him down.

At last he stopped before the DHD. His hand wavered above the signs and clenched into a fist.

Sam sidled up to him. "You can't read it anymore, can you?"

She was unable to tell whether he had understood her or not. But he knew what was happening. His eyes expressed fear and sadness better than any words.

Sam placed her hand on Daniel's and guided him to the signs. They pressed them together. When the seventh chevron locked, he smiled at her, a small smile of gratitude that had nothing happy about it. There was only one more thing to do before the wormhole engaged.

The Colonel gently moved Sam aside. He patted Daniel on the shoulder. "Dial us home, Danny-boy."

Daniel pushed the orange crystal.


	2. Part 2

_Try Again_, by Tefnut - Part 2

"Code Seventeen!" Jack yelled on setting foot on the platform. "We've been compromised."

He kept a hand on Daniel's shoulder and led him down the stairs despite his obvious distress at seeing rifles pointed at them.

The General shouted above the wail of the sirens from the security of the observation room. "What happened, Colonel O'Neill?"

"Daniel's been messed with. We need a medical team."

"You've got it."

True to his word, Janet Fraiser's team rushed into the 'gate room, pushing gurneys before them. Jack nudged Daniel forward, hoping he would get the hint. He stood still, staring wide-eyed at the two solid nurses who were coming their way.

"Everyone's mobile," noticed Janet. "What's wrong, and who?"

"It's Daniel," said Carter. "He seems to"

Daniel shook Jack's hand away and walked out of the room, pushing back the nurses who were trying to detain him.

"Don't stop him!" Jack ordered the armed soldiers who were aiming at him.

"Good God, what's wrong with him?"

"You tell me, Doc."

—

One of the nurses retreated to the back of the room. Kicking the door open hadn't made a very good impression on the young woman, obviously. Daniel jumped on the first infirmary bed.

Janet finally caught up with him with Jack, Sam and Teal'c on her heels. They were talking, the nurses were talking, everybody was talking, and he didn't understand a word. Either this was the biggest practical joke ever and they had all decided to learn a foreign language - one he had no clue about, at that - or he had a _real_ problem.

Ah, great, the lovely shine a bright light-in-the-eyes moment. Daniel cooperated with the usual examination as well as he could. He followed Janet's pen. He mimicked her actions when she wrinkled her forehead, shut her eyes tight, or smiled. He moved his chin against her hand, shrugged, and stuck his tongue out in a very professional manner. All was fine and dandy, except for the things that mattered.

Janet asked him questions, none of which he could answer. He'd achieved better in the temple while dazzled and scared. He wasn't dazzled any more - though he was still scared - so why was it so hard? Janet barked, not at him, but at all the other people buzzing around the place. She'd probably asked them to shut up, because suddenly Daniel couldn't hear anything but the doctor's voice.

He caught a word. "Name?"

Daniel rolled his eyes and engaged in the difficult task of uttering his first name. Two syllables, three if he pronounced it the Abydonian way. He settled on "Dan". Short and to the point. Good think he hadn't tried his last name. It would have come out as "Jack". He didn't want them to think he was delusional, on top of it.

He couldn't tell them where he was, though he understood the question. He pointed at the bed and at various torture instruments laid out on a stand, and pulled at Janet's medical uniform. The word for the place wouldnt come. Jack had to find a seat at this point. Daniel looked a message at him, hoping he would get the right expression across. It would have been so much easier to just say, "I'm sorry," followed by a confident "I'm fine". If only.

Daniel hadn't learned twenty-three languages without getting to know the areas of the brain involved in the process. He could picture them easily. While Janet talked more nonsense, he painted a nice schema with vivid colours. He put names on the three significant parts of the drawing, and picked up the easiest one.

He sent the two syllables to the tip of his tongue. He made them roll in his mouth. This word had a bitter taste.

When he felt ready, he hushed Janet with a finger, and spoke. From the look on her face, his first try hadn't been coherent. So he said it again, taking a deep breath to fight his welling tears. "Broca."

She averted her eyes.

—

Janet Fraiser held up one of the x-ray scans on the light board. "An MRI would have been a very bad idea."

"Why?" asked Jack.

"See that little white dot, here? This is an implant. It might be ferromagnetic."

"If it is, the magnetic field of the MRI would have caused the implant to move in Daniel's brain," said Carter.

"Exactly. I've heard it happen with aneurysm patients, before they created titanium clips to repair the arteries. Some died."

Jack looked at his feet. He'd been the one to ask Janet to shove Daniel in the magnet box. Slowed by guilt he moved to Daniel's side. The latter had decided to stay as far from the scans as he could without actually leaving the room. As was often the case when he withdrew from people, he was sitting on a table, not on a chair. He shivered despite the robe he was wearing.

"What function does this implant fulfil?" asked Teal'c.

"It is located in the arcuate fasciculus, so"

Jack whispered, "You probably understand all this stuff more than I do, buddy." He shrugged, just to get his point across. Daniel shook his head.

"Let me show you, it will be easier." Janet disappeared behind a gurney to search in a low cabinet against the wall. When she straightened up again, she was carrying a brain in her hand. "This is Oscar's brain."

"Oscar?" Jack shifted closer to Daniel. He trusted Janet, of course. But the picture of this poor Oscar's plastic bean was just a bit creepy. The guy used to stand in a closet in Janet's office. He wasn't supposed to send parts of himself to vacation in other rooms.

Janet placed the brain on the gurney and rolled it towards the two men. She removed one part of the left hemisphere, and poked at a purple apricot located on the side. "This is the Wernicke's area. In layman's terms, it allows to us to understand words. This," she continued, pointing at a strawberry located above the former zone and nearer the front, "is Broca's area. It adds grammar to the words."

"Boke," said Daniel.

Jack frowned. "That rings a bell."

"You remember when you were turned into primitives?" Janet explained. "Daniel wanted to study the Broca divide. But that's something else. Pierre Broca dissected the brain of a man who suffered from aphasia. He could only say one word. It was Tan. That's what Broca called him. After Tan died, Broca found that this area was damaged."

"What has it got to do with Daniel? The implant is not there, it's in this green whatsit. I saw it on the scan!" Jack tapped a candy cane plugged in the areas Janet had shown.

"Well spotted, Colonel. This neural pathway connects Wernicke's area to Broca's. I'll need to carry out further tests to be sure, but I think that the implant filters all information travelling through those two areas."

"So that's what prevents Daniel from talking or understanding what we say?" asked Carter.

"That, and reading too."

"Swell."

For a long minute, nobody dared saying anything. Carter trembled fighting back tears. Teal'c shared his strength with her by standing so close to her that they were almost touching. Jack knew she needed to hug Daniel, but he wanted to do it first, as well as he dared to inside the mountain. He eased onto the table near his friend, and placed one hand on his thigh.

It was Daniel who finally broke the heavy silence. "Why?"

"The aliens disabled you to prevent you from deciphering their writings, Daniel Jackson."

Jack interpreted Daniel's frown as a sign he hadn't understood. He gently tapped his friend's temple. Not the left one. "You're smart, Danny. Too smart for them. That's why."

Daniel bent, grabbed the brain and threw it across the room.

—

"Yeah, uh, the footage is a bit dark, but" Robert Rothman pushed his glasses up his nose.

"There's no but, Rothman. Figure out that crap, starting now!"

Sam paused the video. She would have to keep tabs on the three men if they were to stay in the same room for much longer.

The Colonel had plastered a young airman to a wall for bumping into Daniel. The corridor was narrow and busy; things like that happened everyday. But dear God, did the poor boy apologize! Sam had hoped this display of power would allow the Colonel to calm down. Obviously, it hadn't been enough.

Sam granted Rothman a smile. He uttered a weird, strangled sound before wobbling to the back of the lab. The printer was churning out impressions of the wall. Daniel was already shaking one dry. He stopped Rothman before he could get to the other prints. "I shall not try again."

Rothman startled. "What? He, he just spoke!"

"He gave us that line already." The Colonel grabbed a seat. All hopes Sam had about him leaving Rothman alone vanished.

Daniel put the print back on the table and pushed Rothman out of his way to retreat in a corner. Maybe now was the right time for Sam to claim the comfort they'd been denied, when the Colonel had pulled rank on her before. And what for? A squeeze on the leg, and a fit of temper afterwards? That was not what Daniel needed.

Daniel - Sam - needed a hug. Which she would give him, if only he allowed her to. He'd wrapped himself in a self-protective stance, and there was not much room left for an embrace.

Despite his sullen look, Sam strode to him, decided to plant a kiss on his cheek. She expected him to pull back. He didn't. Instead he opened his arms, grabbed Sam in a tight embrace, and buried his head in her shoulder.

—

The shrink asked him to sit, or so Daniel assumed by the way he pointed at the chair. He slumped into it and waited for MacKenzie to finish his welcome chat, which he delivered at high speed.

Janet had tried to explain him why she'd sent him here. She'd shown him Oscar's brain again, but Daniel had only noticed that parts of the right hemisphere were smashed. He'd gladly switch his broken areas with the skeleton's to recover his speech.

MacKenzie snapped his fingers, riveting Daniel. The head-shrinker had placed two pictures on the table. They were almost identical, both showing a horse and a cow.

Daniel sniggered. He knew how to solve this problem before MacKenzie could state its terms. When he'd studied Broca, he had read about Tan. His curiosity had then taken over, and he had learned more than he wanted to know about aphasia and how to diagnose it.

The horse kicked the cow. The horse was kicked by the cow. To Daniel it all sounded the same.

MacKenzie spoke slowly. " image. Jackson horse kick cow."

Daniel let his hand hover above the pictures. He took a deep breath and picked up the one with the kicking horse. It was wrong, and he knew it. But it was what he had heard.

"No." MacKenzie put the images back in a drawer. He slammed it, and kicked the foot of his desk to propel his black leather office chair, and himself, backwards. "You aphasia learn."

Daniel's heart stopped. So, he had to start all over again. Every syllable, every word. It would take so much time, and he'd probably never be a linguist again. Was it worth the pain? He wasn't so sure. This or dying He would have to think about which was preferable. Ask Jack, somehow. He was about to pronounce a laborious "maybe" when unwanted words took the decision for him. "I shall not try again, or they will kill me."

—

Jack followed the squad of scientists, comprised of MacKenzie, Janet, and the SG-1 evil twins who would become Siamese if they clutched each other for much longer, from the shrink's waiting area down to the briefing room.

Teal'c was standing guard. He stood strong as a pillar, still as a statue. Shadows rimmed his eyes.

He bowed and motioned them in. Jack was the last one to enter. He took the last seat available, opposite Daniel.

Hammond cleared his throat. "What are your conclusions, Doctor MacKenzie?"

"He presents all the symptoms of silent aphasia. As you've probably noticed, he can't speak. He only understands basic sentences and is unable to read or to write. Basically, he's lost the ability to communicate."

"But can't he use signs, or physical demonstrations?" asked Carter.

Jack nodded at her. Way to go, girl.

"Aphasia comes with another disorder that affects movements called apraxia. His symptoms are not too acute, fortunately, but he won't be able to do much more than point at an object, or pick it up, or"

" throw it across the room." Jack clenched his fists. "How long is it going to be before he's normal again?"

"I'm sorry, Colonel. I have yet to tell you the really bad part, and"

"What bad part? It can't be worse than that! Use your degrees and fix him, for cryin' out loud! I don't know, remove this piece of shit from his brain, or"

"Colonel O'Neill, that's enough. Please go on, Doctor."

"Thank you, General. Believe me, I'm really sorry. He's been, uh, programmed not to learn to speak anymore."

Jack closed his eyes. "He gave you his 'I shall not try again' line."

"So you heard it already?"

"Yes. He said it in the temple, and then to Doctor Rothman when he had another look at the writings," said Carter.

"The aliens do not wish to take any chance with Daniel's ability to decipher their language."

Teal'c had a way of summing things up without letting anger corrupt his words. Jack didn't have this skill, so he said nothing.

"Thank you, Doctor. Doctor Fraiser has already informed us that it would be too dangerous to surgically remove the implant." Hammond turned to Janet, who was too busy fiddling with her fingers to notice. He stood, and walked to the back of Jack's chair. "I have contacted the Tok'ra to see if we can learn more about what happened."

"Jack"

Jack leaped forward, nearly flying across the table, and reached out to his friend. "Yes, Daniel, what is it?"

He shook his head. "Jacob."

"Yes, son," said Hammond. "Jacob is coming."


	3. Part 3

_Try Again_, by Tefnut - Part 3

Teal'c heard a rasping sound. Daniel had accepted his invitation. Teal'c stood, his movements controlled. He strove to prevent a draft that would blow the candles out. He cracked the door open wide enough for Daniel to slip in the room. Teal'c led him around the circle of candles to the place he had selected for him.

He couldn't offer Daniel the same kind of comfort as Major Carter did. His female companion warmed her brothers-in-arm by her presence alone. The unguent of her hugs healed the deepest hurts.

Given time, O'Neill would heal Daniel, too. His power lay in his eyes. He had yet to find the strength to look at his friend.

Teal'c's gift was different. He could provide Daniel with an oasis of silence.

At his sign, they sat cross-legged. Daniel closed his eyes, allowing Teal'c to observe him as his breathing eased and his posture relaxed. His eyes moved rapidly under his eyelids, and he twitched. Daniel would reach Kel'no'reem, but it would take time.

Teal'c ensconced himself in meditation. He had chosen a seat opposite to Daniel, so that a line drawn between the two men would coincide with the diameter of the circle. The symmetrical figure soothed the spirit, but lacked in stability. Like Major Carter's motorbike that relied on speed unless it was to fall, this circle owed tribute to Teal'c's steadiness.

The third anchor soon tiptoed into the candlelit shelter. O'Neill was late. Teal'c looked at him, and then at the floor. He controlled this space. O'Neill abode by his rules, and sat without disrupting the fragile flames.

Teal'c shifted to his left. Invisible lines connected the three men in an equilateral triangle. Because tripods could stand without external assistance, Daniel's jerky movements soon stopped. Stillness descended on the contemplative figures.

—

Jacob pinned the small cylinder onto Daniel's right temple and connected it to a flat console by a thin wire. "I'm sorry, Danny, I will have to use the holographic abilities of the memory device."

Jack frowned. "Too many words, Jacob." He snapped his fingers to get Daniel's attention. "We will see your memories. You understand?"

"Yes."

"George, before we start Do we really need all these people around?" asked Jacob. "There's no way to control what he will remember. I have to stay, but we might as well give him _some_ privacy."

"Good idea. Colonel O'Neill, as his commanding officer, I want you to remain with Doctor Jackson during this procedure."

"Fine by me. You don't mind, Daniel?"

The man raised his eyebrows, before mouthing an "Oh" when everybody but Jack and Jacob left the room.

"I think he's OK with that," said Jack.

"Let's start, then." Selmak took control. Daniel grabbed Jack as her voice boomed against the concrete walls. "I would like you to agree with him on a stop signal. I'm setting the device to its minimum intensity, but I don't know what influence the implant will have on his memories."

"No offence, Selmak, but we'd both prefer having Jacob around for that."

"None taken," said Jacob.

Jack sat before Daniel. "Can you say stop?"

"Stop."

He touched the device. "Good. If this hurts, say stop. Yes?"

"Yes."

"I hate to do this to him." Jacob activated the device.

—

A sharp pain pierced his skull, leaving a tingling sensation on his skin. It reminded Daniel of the first time a memory device had been used on him, in the carbon-copy of the SGC created by Hathor. The holographic screen activated, displaying the abrasive face of a greying man - a fake General. He moved away to reveal another holographic screen on which a scantily clad cow-goddess was blowing pink air on the viewer's nose.

"Focus, Danny. Not that."

Jack articulated much more than he used to. Daniel could hear these disjointed words, and understood most of them. It was hard to believe that this depleted language bore any relation to English.

He concentrated on the temple. It looked a bit like a dig he'd been on with his parents. Now that the Egyptian building was retransmitted by the screen, Daniel observed that the art was different. The sculptures dated back to the Old Kingdom and their design was more abstract than the beheaded statues. The faded colours were very similar, though. Daniel's mother smiled. "This place was alive, once."

Daniel blinked and willed himself to think of his most recent memories. Here, back with SG-1. He could look at the screen again. They were inside the temple. Daniel's hand was doodling in his notebook, while Jack was pestering him. Though he could hear him talking in his head, he couldn't understand what was retransmitted, half a second later, to Jack and Jacob.

Daniel looked up at the wall. The scribbles intertwined in the room, misshaped Goau'ld signs colliding with meaningless embellishments. Daniel licked his lips. There was something here an idea. Something that he could understand, if only

Suddenly the picture changed to that of a naked boy.

"Who's that?" Jack asked.

"Paki." His first best friend, back in Cairo. Daniel was six, the other boy around ten. He belonged to a Dinga tribe who camped near the archaeological dig. His grasp of English was nil. To play with him, Daniel had learned Paki's dialect without his parents' help. He'd been so proud when they'd exchanged their first words! Just when Daniel was about to say something, Paki ran to a cow to drink its blood.

"The temple, Danny!"

Daniel smirked. _Disgusted much, Jack? That's just the way of the Dinga_, he thought. He went back to the square room, and called for Sam or Teal'c to look at what he had found. Something about the embellishments escaped him, but he didn't have the time to tell them.

A column of light fell on him.

"After?"

After that, there was nothing. Just the light, the buzz, and the pain in his skull.

"Daniel, you can stop."

"No."

He hung on until he recalled his coming to. The face of a holographic Jack came into focus, startling the real man. Moments later the room swirled, following Daniel's movements, until he fixed his eyes on the wall.

The scribbles, the flourishes, the faded colours Why hadn't he noticed earlier? This vine hadn't been there before. That sign was reversed. This other one had shifted to the left. "Jack!"

"What? Stop?"

"No! Jack, it" And then the punishment struck again. "I shall not try again or they will kill me. I shall not try again or they will"

"Jacob, stop it!"

"Kill me kill me kill me!" Daniel fell to the ground. He bit his hand to block the words. They kept flooding his brain. Jack was holding him tight, talking gibberish, calling for help, probably. His voice smoothened and became melodious. Daniel abandoned himself to the lullaby, but not before he'd tasted his own blood.

—

"Come in, Colonel. Close the door behind you." Hammond stacked reports up on a corner of his desk and invited Jack to take a seat. "How is he doing?"

"Fraiser says he's recovering nicely."

"Spare me that, Jack. I know what she said. How do _you_ think he's doing?"

Jack sprang up from his chair and started pacing Hammond's office. "It's Daniel. He's fine! He says he's fine, as usual. Three days ago you couldn't shut him up, and now he can't even get his name right!"

"Please, sit."

Jack yanked the chair and fell onto it. Hammond wiped his face. He surmised that he wouldn't be able to grant Jack what he'd come to.

"General, I want to go back there."

"What for?"

"To blow the place up! We can drive those bastards out of there with the right equipment. Then they'll fix him, or"

"Or what? You'll kill them? No."

"Why not? Look, what they've done to Daniel, it's, it's Nobody's gonna hurt one of my men like that and still be able to tell the tale the day after!"

"Have you assessed the threat? No? I thought so."

Jack tapped the tips of his fingers against the table. "Shit."

Hammond sighed. After a glance at the door, he unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk, and took a metallic flask and two glasses out of it. "Jack, I know I can count on you not to disclose that information."

"Your secret stash?"

"Cognac. From Fine Woods. Not the best one, but not bad either." He poured the golden liquid into the two glasses. He trusted his Cognac could wheedle the wildest men. Maybe they should try it on that planet, he thought.

He sniffed at the precious spirits and took a sip. "It's not poisoned, you know."

Jack turned the glass in his hands. When he finally brought it to his lips Hammond had almost finished his. "You're not going to court-martial me for drinking on the job, are you?"

"What do you think?"

"I think we should do something."

Back to the matter at hand already. At least Jack had calmed down to a manageable level. Hammond put his glass on the table. "I'm not going to send another team yet. Three linguists and Rothman are working overtime on the video Daniel has brought back. Until they've deciphered the language, everybody stays here."

"It's Daniel, George."

"I'm aware of that." Hammond gulped the last of his cognac. He itched to bomb the temple to rubble too. But unlike Jack, he still hoped that Daniel would overcome this trial. The scholar had surprised them more than once. Hammond had looked him in the eyes. Even though he was unable to communicate, his brilliance shone through just as much as before. "It's Daniel. Which is exactly why I won't blow up this world."

—

"How long has it been?"

Grey dragged himself out of his contemplation of the statues. "Centuries. Millennia. I'm not sure."

Brown was pacing in front of the blank wall, her arms crossed behind her back. "No, not that. I wasn't thinking of the eradication."

"The visitors, then? Three days ago at most."

"Yes. The visitors. They haven't come back."

Grey picked up the nose of a broken statue and crushed it between his fingers. The dust fell on his toes. "I was right. It was enough to scare them away."

"It's a shame."

"Yes, of course. If they were to come back, you could kill them. You're missing on so much fun because of me." The man in the grey tunic stared at one of the few intact statues. Tearing its head off was tempting.

Brown interrupted his blow. "Don't! There are not many left."

"Who cares? They were corrupted."

"So are we."

—

Sam rubbed her eyes. She'd been working on the latest field samples for hours. "Everything's a blur. What about we stop here for today?"

Daniel looked up from his microscope. "What?"

She made the standard sign for a timeout. He approved. They tidied up in silence, Daniel cleaning up and shelving the anonymous test tubes while Sam took care of everything that was labelled. Once she'd put the last bottle into the fridge, she gave the lab a once over. "Good."

Daniel looked exhausted. Sam had given him enough work to keep him busy all day. He had counted bacteria, double-checked numerical data, and observed geological maps. He made an adequate research assistant. A very quiet research assistant.

"Major Carter?"

Sam whirled to face the newcomer. She wasn't expecting him, especially not this late at night. "Hi, Robert."

"Hi. I thought I'd find you two here." Rothman stepped in the lab, and was promptly relieved of the stack of photographs and of the notebook he was carrying by Daniel.

"You found something?" Sam asked.

"Actually, no, I didn't. I'm stuck. This thing, it doesn't make sense!"

Oblivious to the conversation, Daniel shuffled the photographs and laid them on the table. Sam passed around it so she could look at him. He was waving his hands. A vein in his neck was twitching. Thinking lines furrowed his forehead, and he looked both nervous and focused.

"What is he doing?"

"I think he's got it. He knows what's written on the wall." Sam sat on a stool. Daniel emitted a strangled cry. He picked up the leather-bound notebook, not to read it like Sam had first thought, but to bite it as hard as he could. He was fighting the dreaded sentence again.

"What, Daniel? What does it mean? You know, I'm sure it's completely random."

Daniel shuffled the photographs again, and banged on the table. He let go of the notebook. The marks of his teeth were embedded in the cover. "Wall!"

"Yes, it's a wall. So?"

"Robert, he's trying. Shut up and wait."

One more time, Daniel took the prints and jumbled them before putting them back on the table. Sam couldn't find any logic in his actions.

"I shall not." He winced. "Move."

"Move? You shall not move?"

"No, just 'move'. I don't think he said 'I shall not' on purpose," Sam said.

"I still don't understand, I'm sorry!" Robert tittered. "I can't do this any more, Daniel. We've been working on it for days with the guys, and we haven't progressed one iota! You know what, it's you we need to read that stuff. You."

Daniel tensed. His nostrils flared in anger. He slowly turned towards Rothman and said, "Wall."

"I'm sorry. No."

Sam was on the wrong side of the table. She couldn't stop Daniel from pushing his colleague away. Just as she reached Rothman to help him up, he stormed out of the room. A photograph slid under the door he slammed behind him.

—

Jack had given up on going home after midnight and an extensive stay near the commissary's coffee machine. It was safer than facing a bottle of cheap whiskey. He had no cognac at his place. Such a shame Tomorrow he would buy a bottle, drag Daniel topside and give him a taste of Hammond's medicine.

He was strolling aimlessly. It wasn't like he had anything better to do. He couldn't focus on paperwork, and he didn't feel like socializing. Passer-bys were few and far between, thankfully. The quiet of the base was undisturbed by the soft murmur of the ventilation shafts.

Which is why he couldn't miss the commotion round the corner.

Daniel rushed forward, Carter puffing behind him. Rothman was not far either, pleading for Daniel to listen. He likely wouldn't, even given the choice. Jack hopped to the left and jostled into him. Daniel shoved back.

"Whoa!"

Daniel raised his hands to the sky and dashed on.

"Carter, what happened?"

Rothman answered for her. "He's upset because I've given up on deciphering this language."

"Upset? He looked about ready to kill someone! And, Rothman, you're _not_ allowed to give up."

"Colonel, maybe we should try to reason him."

Jack looked down the corridor. "I'll do that, Carter."

—

Daniel hadn't managed to get rid of Jack. He'd caught up with him in the locker room and had dogged him to the gymnasium. Daniel pushed the double doors open and turned the light switches on. The neon tubes cracked to life, flooding the room with a harsh whiteness.

He chucked his boxing gloves and his jacket on a bench. It was soon followed by his tee shirt. At the last moment, Jack snitched his glasses from him and placed them on a shelf.

Daniel snarled. It was as close as a "sod off" as he could get. He didn't want Jack's help. There was a reason he had chosen the deserted gymnasium to vent out his anger. Jack should know better than to stay around him when he was pissed off.

Of course Jack didn't listen. Instead he pulled out the hand wraps he'd taken out of Daniel's locker.

Daniel was amazed that Jack had thought of that. Janet would kill him - she would kill both of them, actually - if he turned up in the infirmary in the morning with knuckles so bruised they might as well be broken.

Daniel sat. Okay, maybe he needed Jack's help. Maybe he wanted him to stay. It was hard to maintain control, and he wanted nothing more than to jump to his feet and fight, but Daniel let Jack bandage his hands and lace the gloves.

"Go," Jack said at last.

Daniel threw himself at the punching bag.

—

The brown leather smelled of old sweat. Jack closed his eyes and clutched his fingers into the bag to prevent it from bouncing. Daniel hit hard, repeatedly. Each of his punches felt like a blow to Jack's stomach. He wasn't sure how much of the pain was physical. He'd certainly sport a few bruises later.

What most of Jack's fellow soldiers failed to see in Daniel was his endless supply of energy. Even though he had earned their respect, they still considered him as a flaky bookworm who needed to be nudged in the right direction by someone smarter and more focused than him.

Daniel was focused. He had to be, if only to control this energy which threatened to eat him alive. He was freeing his aggression right now, and Jack was scared. If someone sandbagged him one too many times, if, for whatever reason, Daniel lost control, Jack hoped he wouldn't be around to witness the result.

The punching bag contacted with his cheekbone. Jack cried out, surprised, and the pounding stopped. Daniel pulled away and sank to the ground against the wall.

Jack clenched the bag until his ears stopped ringing before joining his friend. "Feeling better?"

He helped Daniel remove his gloves. Despite the bandages, his fingers were red and swollen. Jack stood to get an ice pack. He knew he would find one in the freezer of the small room that served as the gymnasium's field infirmary, a poor annex of Fraiser's domain. Jack groaned all the way there and back.

"Shit, Daniel, it wasn't even a proper fight!" Jack said, applying the cold bag on Daniel's hands. "Next time you want to beat me like that, let me hit you back, okay?"

"What?"

"Nothing. Don't mind me, I'm talking to myself." Jack sighed. He missed his friend's constant chatter. He generally dismissed it as an annoying background noise, but now Hell, Jack would even welcome a lecture! He didn't always listen to them, and when he did, he often disagreed. This banter, though, was an important ingredient of their friendship.

He turned to face Daniel and looked into his eyes. They remained immobile, leaning sideways against the wall, sharing fear and exhaustion in a forced silence. Daniel wouldn't last long like that.

"Jack."

"Yes?"

"Want. Go."

"You want to go? What do you mean? Shower and bed?" Jack spoke slowly, waiting for Daniel to nod his understanding between each question.

"No. Wall."

Jack bit his lips. Should he allow the kid to go back to the temple and get himself killed? _Yeah sure, you bet_. "Shower. Bed. That's where you go."

—

Teal'c hadn't talked during the entire briefing. He had observed as Daniel Jackson had laboriously tried to explain what he wanted, displaying pictures of the wall and pointing at the Stargate. He had watched Major Carter intertwine her fingers with his, rubbing her thumb against his wrist, heedless of the security camera aimed at them.

He had accepted Robert Rothman's apologies, for the man had worked hard and slept little, judging by the shadows under his eyes. Confident that he had done everything humanly possible, Teal'c had stopped O'Neill from tearing the poor archaeologist's head off.

Hammond leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. He was about to make a decision that would determine Daniel Jackson's future.

It was time for Teal'c to say what he believed. He stared at his wounded teammate and stood. "I concur with Daniel Jackson. It is my opinion that we should go back to the temple where he was attacked."

"Yeah. Only if we can blow the place up, which is not an option, by the way." O'Neill's words dripped vengeance. Teal'c felt the same desire coursing in his blood. If Daniel Jackson was to die because of the implant, Teal'c would destroy the temple stone by stone, even if he had to disobey Hammond to do so. He would find its occupants and strangle them until they begged him for mercy. Then he would kill them. Slowly.

But his friend was alive. Teal'c respected him too much to avenge him without his consent.

Hammond straightened up and looked at him. "Why do you think Doctor Jackson is right? I have no idea what he plans to do there, but if you have a better insight in his motivations, I want to know."

"Daniel Jackson has not informed me of his plans."

"So?" O'Neill was growing impatient.

"I trust him."

That settled it. Half an hour later, SG-1 was back on P9J-733, the planet of the beheaded statues.


	4. Part 4

_Try Again_, by Tefnut - Part 4

Sam caressed the outside wall of the temple. The pale rectangular building looked innocuous in the warm, bright sunlight. A grasshopper hopped onto her weapon out of the high grass. The green insect looked and stridulated exactly like its earthling counterparts.

The Colonel called her back, and the grasshopper jumped away.

"Yes, Sir?"

"Area's clear."

"Yes. I'm sorry, I was"

"Busy playing with the wildlife, I saw that. We have no time for that, Major."

Sam bit her tongue. She followed the Colonel to the spot where Teal'c and Daniel were waiting. The latter looked eager to go. She didn't want him to. She was afraid, very afraid. What had happened in the temple was beyond her understanding. The technology involved. The cruelty. It was too much.

"Time to go. Carter, Teal'c, you stay here."

"But, Sir!"

"No but. If something happens to us, I want you to head back to the 'gate and get the hell out of Dodge."

Sam kicked a small stone. "I understand. Colonel, I'd like to point out that it might take a while. Last time we were unconscious for seven hours."

"Wait for twelve hours, at most. If we're not back by then, leave."

Sam nodded. She brushed a finger over Daniel's cheek and asked, "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She closed her eyes and hugged her friend. She saluted the Colonel, and watched him and Daniel disappear in the temple.

"You must trust Daniel Jackson," said Teal'c.

"I'm trying."

—

"They are back." Brown's voice betrayed no emotion. "What should we do?"

"Let's wait."

Grey was relieved that the Jaffa and the woman hadn't followed the two men in the temple. That would make two less victims if they decided to kill the intruders.

The men looked harmless. The one named Jack had removed Daniel's glasses and slid them in his pocket. They faced each other, arms dangling, too far from the wall to be able to see anything.

Daniel started to move, but Jack grabbed him before he could go very far. The two men hugged, clenching tight. Grey couldn't remember this sensation. The embrace looked both strong and tender, full of an emotion that Grey was longing for.

If he squeezed Brown like that, she would break. Grey snorted. Maybe that wasn't such a bad idea.

Jack sat on a bench, his elbows resting on his knees. Daniel, the one they had hurt, marched across the temple to the wall. He didn't look back at his companion.

"He is brave," Grey said.

"Why did the other man come with him? He knows he is in danger, doesn't he? He should leave the silenced one on his own."

"They are not as selfish as we are."

"We're not selfish!"

"Really?" Grey brought his attention back to the room. He couldn't see Daniel anymore. He was too close to the wall. "What is he doing?"

"He's touching the words."

"He shouldn't be able to try reading."

"Didn't you hear me, stupid? He's just touching them, I said! Not reading."

Grey could feel it too, now. Daniel was rubbing the faded flourishes and scribbles. "Annoying."

"Isn't it?" Brown shivered. "Let's do something."

As the man's fingers brushed faster against the hard surface, it became harder to focus. Nevertheless, Grey managed to keep his calm when he asked Brown: "You want to kill him?"

He saw her lean into the touch. "I'm not so sure anymore."

—

The grinding of the stone of the front door barring the exit was as painful as the screech of chalk on a chalkboard. Daniel looked back, peering through the dust. At the other extremity of the room, Jack was talking into the radio. He was out of reach, ridiculously far away in the small temple.

Daniel tried to smile at him. They shared a last, unwavering look before the column of light fell on Jack. When the dim quietness returned, the man slid from the bench, unconscious or dead. Daniel gulped. He couldn't stomach that thought, so he focused on his task.

His fingers had remained in contact with the wall, their tips resting on rust-coloured vines. Even though he knew what he was looking for, it took him a while to notice the change. The stone was as cold and dry to the touch as before, but it wasn't still anymore. The movement was slow, patient almost. One by one, the scribbles and flourishes unravelled, disappearing into the depths of the building, leaving a blank tan surface.

"Peace," Daniel said.

The door he had tried so hard to open on his first trip glided noiselessly down the ground. Daniel tracked the last grey line marring the immaculate façade to the dark opening. Nobody was waiting, but Daniel found an architectural invitation to go further. He flicked on his flashlight and stepped on the stairhead.

There was no sound. No footsteps, no foreign breathing. No rat squeaking to hide away. The staircase wasn't lit, nor was it adorned with statues or murals. It went straight down below the ground, so deep that Daniel couldn't see the end of it.

He went down the flight of stairs. He counted inwardly in English, in Goau'ld, in Abydonian, in every language he could think of. As he progressed, he could see the landing at the bottom of the flight, a closet with no visible access but for the stairs themselves. He reached the last step in English. Four hundred thirty one. He said each digit separately, taking his time, wincing at the garbage that left his mouth.

The front façade slid aside to reveal a bright room. The walls, made of a transparent material that reminded Daniel of quartz, seemed to produce their own light, or to draw the rays of the sun down into the cave. Whatever the source, it filled the place with a light so natural that Daniel could almost feel it warm his face.

Rows and rows of shelves stretched to the depths of the room. What looked like shoeboxes were stacked on them, from the floor to the ceiling.

Daniel entered the warehouse and followed the wall perpendicular to the shelves. He soon reached a bare area that had been concealed by the high partitions. The only piece of furniture in the ten-square-yard chamber was a simple, massive stone table. Daniel had seen similar articles used as sacrificial altars. He couldn't help stepping back.

"Come in," a male voice commanded. From behind a shelf, two figures walked into the chamber. Their shambling gait matched their withered faces. Their lips curled downwards, pulled by deep wrinkles. The woman was bending under the weight of her hump. To a careless observer, the grey man and the brown woman would have appeared innocuous. Daniel, however, took in the roughness of their skin and the snaky ribbons entwined in their hair, and feared for his life.

_Gorgons_, he thought. Quickly, Daniel lowered his head and stared at his feet. If the legends held true, looking into the creatures' eyes would be an immediate death sentence.

"Don't be afraid, child. Look at us." The female Medusa's voice was raspy.

Too scared now for his words to pass the barrier of his damaged brain, Daniel shook his head. He peeked at the entranceway: the concrete wall was back in place. Daniel was at the mercy of the ancient Gorgons.

—

"Is he cold?" Brown asked.

The man was shivering. Apart from a short glimpse, he hadn't looked at them since they'd come out of hiding. He was leaning against the wall, one hand held open in front of him as if it could push them back. That Brown couldn't read his attitude bothered Grey. "No. I rather think he's afraid."

"Afraid."

"Yes. You remember 'afraid', don't you?"

"Yes, that's one feeling I'll never forget, thank you! I was there, too, when our race fell to dust! I was there. Do you think I can't still see their faces when the liquid death came from the sky? Their eyes"

"Stop it! You're scaring him." Grey came between his companion and Daniel, who had fallen to the ground and had folded his legs so that his knees touched his chest. Eyes closed, ears plugged, he seemed to refuse the contact he'd been seeking before.

"He doesn't understand me. I can't see how what I say would upset him."

The snakes on Grey's head hissed. "The tone of your voice would scare a piece of wood, dear."

"Ah! You can talk."

Grey pushed his hair out of the way. Unlike Brown, he had trouble restraining his emotions from showing through the mobile, noisy strands that grew on his head. It was his theory that females had more control over their feelings, or even maybe that they had less of them. He couldn't prove it either way. Brown was the only one to which he could compare himself to.

"So, are you going to stare at him all day?"

"I think we should unlock him."

He expected an argument. She simply roared before hurrying to Daniel. She knelt in front of him. "Look at me, child!"

Grey rolled his eyes. That was no way to win the man. He saw her grab his chin and lift it upwards. "Wait!" he said, stopping her just in time. "Don't squelch him. He is delicate."

Brown released her grip and cupped his face in her hand. "You're right. He is soft. So soft Please, look at me, young one. I want to see the life in you."

The man opened his eyes.

—

The two white holes staring at him dazzled Daniel. These were not eyes. These were needles, firebrands, colourless suns. Daniel tried to avert his gaze. When he realised he was unable to do that, he understood that the Medusa's gaze had petrified him like it had the statues up in the temple.

He should have guessed. The statues were too realistic to be artificial objects. On the ones that hadn't been decapitated - and how cruel was that, anyway- every wrinkle, every scar had carved its signature in the stone. It wasn't the masterwork of a sculptor. It was murder.

Flat-tipped fingers were palpating his skull. Lots of them. Maybe they were not fingers, but snakes from the Medusa's hair. Daniel managed to shiver, despite the numbness of his body. The gaze intensified, piercing through his eyes, and he felt a sting of pain in his brain as one of the palps explored his temple.

"Can you hear my words at present?"

Daniel frowned. The Gorgon had spoken quickly in a grotesque mix of Goau'ld and Greek. Despite this and the headache that was blooming since he'd started looking into her eyes, he had understood every single word. He tried to answer, but his rebellious tongue twisted in his mouth.

"Ah! It doesn't work. What has been done cannot be undone." The brown woman stood and looked behind her. Daniel sighed, relieved to be freed from her gaze.

"It took some time for the petrifaction to settle in his brain. You can't expect it to soften back instantly."

The grey Gorgon's hair lengthened and wrapped around Daniel's body. Snakes coiled onto his limbs and his waist. They lifted Daniel, who watched helplessly as the noisy creatures pulled at his arms and legs to straighten them and laid him on his back on the table. Their task accomplished, the snakes withdrew until they were out of sight. Daniel tried to wiggle his fingers. He wasn't sure whether he was successful or not.

"I think he is ready now, my lady. So, Daniel. Why have you come back?"

Daniel mouthed a why, not expecting it to take shape. But the question rose from his stomach to his throat, paused against his teeth, and came out loud. It startled him.

"That's my question, yes. Why, Daniel?"

"By my snakes, I was mistaken! He is stupid! Answer, child. We've been patient, but"

"Patient?" Daniel heard a hiss he assumed came from the grey man's head. "Patient? You're everything but. Give him a minute to get over it. He is flesh and blood, and"

"Was."

"He _was_ flesh and blood until a minute ago. Anyway, you picked him. You said he was dangerous. I was more worried about the woman."

"Ah! She hasn't even dared to come back. But no, no. Of course I wasn't wrong. He was smart. You turned him into a brainless dimwit when you played with him."

"I didn't! Shall I remind you who, exactly, practiced the petrifaction?"

"It was your idea!"

The conversation was rapid. Each word crossed Daniel's mind like a sharpened knife. He would have liked to sit and plug his ears, but the brown woman had deprived him from this possibility. He had to stop the arguing if he didn't want it to drive him crazy.

Daniel dragged a lungful of stale air - noting that he _could_ breathe - and willed himself to talk. "Uh Please, could you stop talking about me like if I wasn't here?"

—

Grey froze, and his hair slopped around his shoulders. He was ashamed at forgetting his guest. Or should he say 'experiment'? Victim? Daniel was here to save his soul, he'd better focus on that. Grey pushed Brown aside none too gently and shuffled to the table. He looked down at the man, placing his head above him so they could see each other despite Daniel's position, and directed his gaze to the man's lips. Daniel hadn't died of fright from staring directly into Brown's eyes, but Grey didn't want to push his luck.

"Will you forgive us?"

"Depends on what you're going to do with me." This was said on a tone that wasn't as bitter as Grey had expected. While he couldn't remember all the nuances of the fleshed beings' speech, he clearly detected a hint of curiosity, maybe even of playfulness.

"We don't know yet."

"What options have you been thinking of?"

"Killing you. Making you one of ours. We could do with some company. Letting you go."

"With my brain intact?"

"Maybe."

"I know which one I would choose."

Grey chuckled. His palps lengthened to meet Brown's, who was laughing. It'd been a long time since he had last heard that.

Daniel's smile was forced. "You know my name, but I don't know yours."

"I'm Grey. She's Brown." They'd had more beautiful names before, but they didn't hold true anymore. Grey could barely remember them. "We are the guardians of our people."

"There are more like you?"

Grey glanced at Brown. "We should show him. Have a little talk. Then we can decide."

Brown's snakes floated above her head. After some wavering, they settled down in an image of agreement. Grey extended one of his tentacles to the man's neck.

"Let me do that," Brown said. "I wouldn't trust you to liquefy water. You'll turn this Fleshed into a pool of blood if you touch him!"

"Fine, fine, woman!" Grey raised his hands in exasperation and stepped back.

He couldn't but admire her skill when she brushed the man's face, only with her fingers at first, then with ten of her snakes. For all her boasting, Grey couldn't deny she was a much better craftswoman than him. She'd been that close to breaking Daniel's jaw, but when she put her mind into it, she really was the best.

Yes. Now he remembered why he had chosen her to live this excuse for a life with.

"Now, sit!"

Daniel complied. He pushed himself up and let his legs dangle over the edge of the table. His shoulders hunched, he gripped the edges of the stone as if he was afraid of falling. A vein in his neck was pulsing. Grey touched it with his index finger. It felt warm. Supple. Alive.

Daniel lifted his hand and grabbed his, provoking an upsurge of envy in Grey. The Fleshed's limbs were pliant and warm. Brown, too, was jealous, as was obvious from the way her palps kept coming back to explore Daniel's face.

"You're beautiful," she said. "So perfect."

The man's face became a shade paler than it already was.

—

Insane. Daniel wasn't sure about the male one, but the female Gorgon was definitely insane. This way she had of touching him called up ugly memories. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

Grey was coming closer. "You were asking about our race."

Daniel thanked him inwardly for interrupting the woman's exploration of his body. "Yes. I'm curious. I'm, I'm a traveller. I've met different people, but nobody quite like you."

"There were lots of us before the fake gods came," Grey said. He sat near Daniel and wrapped one of his arms around his back. Daniel tensed, which only made Grey clench him tighter. "We were living in peace. Our planet was comfortable. Then they came, bringing slaves of flesh and blood onto our world. At first we rejoiced, because the Fleshed were attractive. But then"

"Then they started taking some of your people?" asked Daniel.

"Yes. Apparently their Fleshed were dying. Degenerating."

Brown passed a finger on Daniel's lips. "They didn't look as good as you."

"Hands off, dear! One of the gods managed to steal one of our women. Medusa."

"I've heard about her," murmured Daniel.

"Some of us followed her. Some rebelled, but we were crushed. The Goau'ld have long left this world and forgotten about the last survivors."

"You two?"

"Us two, and the unborn ones."

Daniel caught Brown glancing at the shoeboxes. The hard wrinkles carved deeper into her face as she did so, and her hair uncoiled and drooped. Daniel slid from Grey's grasp and walked to the first set of shelves, always keeping an eye on the Gorgons. They didn't seem to mind him moving around, even though Grey's snakes followed his every moves.

He stopped in front of a box. There was no lid that he could see, and it was made of stone. He'd been fooled into thinking it was cardboard by the colour. So there went the idea that those were shoeboxes.

"There's a button on the right side." Brown's voice had lost of its harshness.

Daniel rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You sure?"

"Of course I am! I've designed them!"

"He didn't mean it like that. Yes, Daniel. We want you to open it."

So he did. And he didn't like what he saw. The bottom of the container slid forward, revealing a creature that looked like a miniature Asgard. Grey, with a big head and huge, pale eyes. Veins smeared its frail body. The fingers and toes were webbed. It had no sex. No snakes on the head, either. It hadn't quite reached this stage of development yet.

"Foetuses? You stash foetuses in this place?"

"Thousands of them."

"We crafted them, child. We two, and the other rebels. We carved them out of our bodies." Brown had moved noiselessly to Daniel's side. He wondered how she'd done that. A palp lowered to the foetus's abdomen, and she brushed it delicately.

"Why?"

"To save our race! Isn't that obvious?"

"We sent warriors through the Chaapa'ai to exterminate the Goau'ld. We're waiting for their return." Grey faltered on the last words.

"I'm sorry to tell you, but you may be waiting for a while yet."

He was met by silence. Slowly, Grey moved to his side. Daniel felt he was in an uncomfortable position, framed as he was by two Gorgons whose hair was winding around his body, with a predilection for his neck. He kept staring at the foetus, who didn't breathe but whose eyes looked alive enough to numb every cell of Daniel's body. Then Brown pressed the button again, and the cradle slid back out of sight.

"You said you haven't met any of ours out there?" asked Grey.

"No. That said, we haven't been everywhere. But there are still plenty of" Daniel almost said snakeheads, in Greek at that, but swallowed back the word in time, "Goau'ld."

Brown moaned. Shrieked. It was a painful sound. Daniel wished it to stop, and Grey probably did too, because he stuffed one of his tentacles into Brown's mouth. When he removed it, she was crying.

"I'm sorry. They are our enemies, too. Maybe we could, you know, fight them together." Daniel talked faster, marvelling at last that he could talk at all, when he'd been forced into silence so easily for days. He couldn't dwell on it, though. "You're powerful. You do this thing with your eyes, and this, uh, hair you have. I'm sure that"

"No," they said together. Grey explained further, "We are to remain with the unborn ones. If either of us gets killed, who is going to bring them to life? Who is going to teach them our culture?"

"Fair enough."

Brown sniggered. "The child is afraid and wants to leave us."

"Well, yes, I'm afraid! Of course I am! You, you chomped my brain and you stole my words, and then you turned me into a freaking statue! Who wouldn't be afraid?" Daniel clenched his fists, and he would have kicked the shelves if the knowledge of what precious treasure they were carrying hadn't stopped him. "Why did you do that to me in the first place? I was just reading your stupid stuff on the wall, and it doesn't even make sense. There was nothing, nothing that could threaten you!"

"That's where you're wrong, Daniel. Brown saw it in you. She may well be the craziest mush in the whole universe - sorry, darling - but she's never wrong about Fleshed's brains. Never. The ones we've petrified up there, for example. I thought they would help us. Brown read in them that they would kill our children. They were traitors."

"Sorry, I'm I suppose I'm a bit confused." Daniel shook himself free from the tentacles. He strolled back to the table and sat. Throwing a tantrum was not standard procedure in the middle of negotiations with hostile aliens. He was afraid he had just blown up his chance of getting out of here in one piece. "I don't do that usually," he said. "I didn't mean it."

"Yes you did. Don't lie. You're angry with me because I saw what you are. I saw you could find us, that you could see us on the wall, watching you, smelling you. I saw you could touch us and guess we were alive. And Grey is a bigger mush than I am, because I would have killed you right then!"

Daniel waved at Grey. "Thank you. I think."

"Don't imagine I did it for you. Brown was right. You could see the messenger behind the message. You revealed us even though we'd invalided your brain."

"Hey, I'm not stupid! I couldn't talk, but I could still think, you know."

"We can fix that," Brown scowled.

Daniel looked at her. Her white eyes, her moving hair; the sad wrinkles around her lips. He didn't get her. He really didn't. The fact he couldn't hold his tongue wasn't helping either. Jackspeak and diplomacy didnt fly in the same universe.

"If we ever get rid of the Goau'ld I mean, we're working on it, we've killed a couple of nasty guys. I'd tell you, but it's a long story. So, if you let me go and we win, I can come back and tell you. Or if I meet some of your people" Daniel took a deep breath. If he met more of their people, he'd probably run away as fast as his legs could carry him.

"Stop looking into her eyes. You'll die of a heart attack before you know it."

Daniel stared at the tips of his boots. He had a scratch on the right one. "I'm scared."

"Of course you are."

"He's holding his own. He's as fearless as can be."

Fearless? Daniel snorted. He couldn't have said that. He was that close to peeing in his pants, and he had stopped thinking straight a long time ago - how much the itch in his brain accounted for that, he couldn't tell. He resorted to begging, not because he thought it would be the smart thing to do, but because he couldn't help it. "Please let me go. Remove this thing from my brain. Please. I want to go. I need my friends. I need them."

Grey winced. The man wasn't going to last much longer if Brown kept staring at him like that. Daniel had closed his eyes, but that wouldn't change a thing at this stage. Brown's gaze was fiery. Soft eyelids couldn't stop it.

His knuckles were white from grasping the edge of the table. He wasn't shaking, but that was only because his skin was hardening again, turning a deep blue colour characteristic of the stone known as Sodalite. Grey could do with a Sodalite friend. He was more than bored by his Muscovite partner. He himself had been a nice shade of green Tremolite in his youth. His vitality had gone with his hopes of seeing his people coming back one day, and he had only retained a dull grey base that shamed him.

"Just stop a minute, will you?" he asked Brown.

She hissed and turned her back to the man.

Grey was wondering. If they petrified him - not completely, but just so that he would still be alive - would it be enough to save Grey's soul? Daniel would never be one of their people, not quite. He wasn't born one, and even Brown's science couldn't go past this obstacle. She would get close, though. Was _close_ good enough? Was it fair to him? "Probably not."

"What?" the man asked.

"Nothing. Lower your eyes."

He didn't. Instead he stared at him, his blue eyes boring into his soul so deep that Grey wondered if the man could turn stone into flesh. This thought was alluring. Yet he knew it couldn't be.

Daniel had stopped breathing. The terror was taking over his body, but he didn't turn his gaze away, not by an inch. Grey closed his eyes. "Why are you doing that to me? Why did you come back? You could have remained on your world. You'd have been safe."

Daniel didn't answer. His tongue was certainly hard like a block of granite, and the part of his brain Brown had been toying with was solidifying again.

Brown lumbered across the room to the table. She grabbed Daniel's right wrist and brushed his hand against her face. She let it drop almost right away. "Not soft anymore."

"Of course not. You looked at him."

"How could I not be looking? He's gorgeous. It's a nice change."

"Thank you very much, dear. But you're still the most beautiful, of course."

The woman smirked. "I am." From the sound of it, she hadn't get the sarcasm. Grey rolled his eyes. Her snakes were coiling around the man, searching the skin underneath the jacket and the tee-shirt. The longer ones went lower to a place Grey didn't want to look at.

She was leering at him. Caressing him with all her palps and fingers. Smelling his scent, still full of the blood that wasn't rushing in his veins anymore. Daniel's blue stone skin was vibrant. Its metallic reflection captured the soft light diffused by the pellucid walls, turning it into thousands of cold stars. He was beautiful.

Grey hated him with a passion.

"What are we going to do with him?" Brown asked.

"It's your call." Grey felt a part of him die. He didn't care. He only cared about Brown. He had hoped she would like the gift - but she only looked disappointed.

No love between them. Not anymore. A toy wasn't going to change that.

"So?" he asked, mildly curious.

"So soft"


	5. Part 5

_Try Again_, by Tefnut - Part 5

Jack stood and paced to the back of the temple. After a long night, dawn was creeping up, illuminating the statues with a cold aura. Teal'c and Carter were still out there, snuggled in the open tent that protected them from the cold.

They took turns speaking on the radio, and had done a good job at keeping Jack awake so far. The main drawback of this was that he'd proved all over again that Jaffa jokes were not funny, even less so the third or fourth telling. Even Teal'c's laugh had stopped being enjoyable once the first astonishment had worn out.

To be fair, Carter's scientific lectures were even worse. "The structural properties of liquid surfaces offer many possibilities in the field of new technologies, like, for example, flexible electronic displays."

"Sweet. Flexible is good." Jack passed a hand on the bare wall before sinking down to the floor, against a pillar. The closed door wasn't hidden to the sight anymore now that the flourishes had, for some reason, scampered away. Jack lit the ground where the front half of a booted footprint disappeared under the stone. It was disturbing - it almost seemed that Daniel had walked through the concrete surface. Like a ghost.

_Don't go there, O'Neill_, Jack thought.

"Colonel, still nothing?"

"Not a single thing. How long has it been?"

"Fourteen hours."

"Okay, that's enough. Bring in the C4. We're extracting him."

"Yes, Sir."

Jack walked to the front as if he could hear Carter activating at the door. Teal'c had gone to the mountain to inform Hammond of the new developments, and had come back laden with explosives and the General's benediction to blow the place up if it came down to it.

"It's ready, Colonel."

A droning sound alerted Jack. "Wait, Carter."

In the middle of the temple, a large column of light too brilliant to see through rose from the ground, hit the ceiling, and disappeared, leaving in its place the huddled form of an unconscious man.

"Daniel!"

"Sir, we saw that. What happened?" Carter asked.

Jack groped for his radio, fighting not to drop his flashlight. "He's back. I'm going to check on him." He hadn't finished blurting out the words before he was at Daniel's side, checking for his pulse. "He's alive," he said. "Carter, gimme a minute, and I call you back."

"Understood, Sir."

"He's alive," he repeated to himself. He shone the light on Daniel's face. His lips were pale, and come to think of it, his skin was a weird shade of blue? Jack shook his head. Colours looked off in this temple.

A surprisingly large amount of blood had again leaked from the barely visible puncture on Daniel's left temple. Jack wiped the gore clean with his thumb, remembering too late that he should have used an antiseptic towelette.

Daniel's eyes snapped open. Holding his breath, Jack moved over him, and shone the flashlight near his eyes. The pupils were identical in size. "Daniel?"

"Jack!"

The man sprang into a sitting position and grabbed Jack by the shoulders, toppling him on his butt. "Are you okay? I'm sorry, I don't know what happened to you. I didn't ask about you. I meant to but"

"Hey, hey, hey, Grasshopper. Are _you_ okay?"

"I am, too. They didn't do anything to you, did they? And Sam and Teal'c, please tell me they're fine! Jack"

Daniel's jabber was barely intelligible. Words mixed up and seemed to get stuck on his tongue, but Jack felt this was more due to fear and excitement than from a Broca brain scramble. It sounded like Daniel had managed to win the aliens over, as always. They'd just have to wait until the bad guys opened the door. Then they'd jump through the Stargate so fast that the wormhole would propel them right into the best pub in Colorado.

"Carter, he seems fine," Jack reported.

Daniel leant forward. He removed his hands from Jack's shoulders and slid them under his jacket, wrapping him into a hug from which Jack couldn't escape. Fingers gripping the fabric of Jack's tee-shirt, head lilted against his neck, he nestled.

"Uh, Daniel? You're comfortable there?"

"Yes. You're warm."

That's when Jack noticed. Daniel felt cold, not like someone who'd spent time in the snow, but like someone who didn't give off heat. His skin was tight to the touch, and if he hadnt been moving and talking, Jack would have sworn Daniel was affected by post-mortem rigor. Jack nudged him back to place a hand on his cheek. There was no other interpretation. Daniel's colour was wrong.

"Been brought back from the dead?"

"Not quite."

"Not quite as in, you're still a bit dead, or not quite, you _didn't_ die?"

"I'm fine. Don't worry, please. I can't stand that. I'll be fine, you know."

"Yeah, sure." Jack passed one arm around Daniel's back to reach his radio. "Don't move. We need more time."

"How long, Sir?"

Jack smiled. With a few exceptions, Carter was the perfect soldier. She didn't question his orders even when she burned to know more about the situation than she really needed. "I don't know. I'll contact you. Over."

Jack extracted the radio from his pocket, removed the earphone and placed the lot on the ground. He forced his fingers between Daniel's torso and his utility vest, and groped for the pocket in which he kept an emergency blanket. He drew it out in spite of Daniel's passive resistance and unfolded it single-handedly. Arranging it around his friend was easier.

Daniel exhaled a puff of must air. "Thank you."

"Tell me what's wrong."

"It's my fault, because I looked at her, and I shouldn't have." He snickered. "She was more your type, anyway. A bit old for me."

"Hey!"

"Well, her hairdo was, uh, fascinating. You'd like it. So I looked, and then she touched me, a lot, and"

"Daniel, you remember this talk we had about bees, sunflowers and alien women?"

The instant Daniel chuckled, spasms contracted his muscles. He clutched Jack tighter. His fingers dug into his ribs, triggering memories of broken bones and punctured lungs Jack wasn't too eager to recall.

"I like it gentle, Daniel."

"Sorry. I'm scared. Please stay with me. Please."

"I'm not moving."

"I wish they were here, too."

"Who?"

"Sam. Teal'c. Need them. Need you. Please hold me tighter."

—

Daniel was shivering from cold and terror. He doubted Jack could feel it. His skin was still too rigid to give away the smallest tremors of his body. Remembering that his fingertips were hard, too, Daniel relaxed his grip.

"Finally!"

"Did I hurt you?"

"No. You know I've always dreamt of having your fingerprints tattooed on my sides."

"Sorry."

"Are you going to stay like that?"

Daniel understood Jack's tone. He heard the friendship, the caring, the anger, and hidden deep under it all, the underlying fear. He could cope with everything else, but the fear had to go. "Grey said the stone skin will go as soon as I stop being afraid."

"If _Grey_ said it, then"

"You want to know everything?"

"You want to tell me?"

"Not really. I don't want to think about it. Once the after-effects have disappeared, maybe." Daniel relaxed to the best of his petrified abilities. He could feel the blood rushing freely in his body, and that felt good. He could feel Jack's warmth enfolding him, and that felt better. He wondered if he could borrow Jack's heat and forget to give it back.

Later, he slid out of Jack's hold. Moving was difficult and breathing was painful, so he kept these at a minimum. When he wanted to talk, he had to block his respiration and try to say everything in one go. Words, at least, were easy to find. He tried a few, for sheer pleasure and to banish the terror. "Coil and hiss, writhe and twist. 1"

"What was that?"

"Poetry."

"You're nuts."

Daniel smiled. His lips and the small wrinkles around his eyes strained. He stood and stretched his muscles, testing their flexibility. "Getting there," he said.

"How long is it going to last? And why doesn't your new girlfriend let us leave?"

"I have no idea." Daniel glanced at the wall. The tentacles were back into place, like he had expected them to be. This was the Gorgons' way to keep an eye on what happened in the temple. It would also inform their people of their presence, were they to come back one day.

The message on the wall had made sense, once. Over the years, Grey and Brown had lost their focus. Every day the words became more disjointed as they succumbed to madness.

Daniel hoped they had still something to tell him. His knees clicked like Jack's, but wouldn't bend, so he had to shuffle his way to the back wall.

Jack jumped back on his feet. "Where are you going?"

"Oh. Uh. I want to, you know, read this. Glasses, please?"

After some fumbling, Jack handed the glasses to Daniel. He slid them back on, forcing the sides over his stiff ears and hair. He clasped Jack's flashlight and directed its beam to the central portion of the wall.

The Gorgons were obviously begging for attention. Vines were thriving, overlapping each other in a dizzying pattern. The colours were more vivid than Daniel remembered: green energized the dull grey, yellow animated the brown. Some strands were sliding along the wall, avoiding each other before settling into place. A yellow tentacle reached out to him, and stopped an inch away from his nose.

"Daniel, is that a suction pad looking at you?"

"It's just her."

"More my type, eh?"

"Definitely," he said, pointing at the spot on the wall where curvaceous lines were shaping a few words. He deciphered it silently. _I like it gentle, too_. That rang a bell, though it took a few seconds for Daniel to recall where it came from.

"What does it say?"

"Nothing to worry about. She's been" He coughed while saying the next word, " eavesdropping."

The tentacle retreated into the wall. Daniel explored another section, and found another sentence. "Do find out about our people and come back to tell us," he said out loud. Even without the colour of the line, he could have told this was from Grey.

"Come back? Only in their dreams."

Daniel dismissed Jack with a wave. He looked straight at the grey word. "Of course we'll be back. I promised."

He distinctly heard Jack's jaw drop. "You. Promised."

"Well, yes."

"You're a goofball."

"Thank you. I love you too."

"And you mean it."

"That we'll come back? Yes." Daniel turned away. He grabbed Jack by the arm and led him to the other side of the temple, confident that the front door would open for them.

It slid down into the ground, revealing a bright doorway broken by two silhouettes. Daniel gave Teal'c and Sam a smile that wasn't blue anymore. With a supple stride he joined them, Jack tagging along, and left the temple.

* * *

1 _Medusa_, by Shel Silverstein 


	6. Epilogue

_Try Again_, by Tefnut - Epilogue.

Robert Rothman put down the print he'd been looking at. "So it really meant mush."

From the stool he was perched upon, Daniel pointed at the curvaceous word. He knew now that it had been written by Brown. "Yup. It's an insult for them. At least, when it applies to one of them. They didn't seem to mind that I was a, a Fleshed. All the contrary, actually."

"Crazy stuff. Even now, it doesn't make sense."

"It wasn't meant to. They were just writing random thoughts on the wall."

"But why did they bother writing at all, then?"

Daniel turned his mug of coffee between his hands. He'd been unable to sleep. Every time he'd tried, Brown's gaze had insinuated itself in his dreams, and he'd woken up screaming. At least he hadn't petrified again.

Because of that he had had a lot of time to think. He had pondered all night on what had caused the Gorgons' madness. The answer had come at dawn, when he'd remembered Grey and Brown's features behind the snakes and the eyes. "Senility," Daniel answered. "They had a purpose, but they lost it."

"You're pitying them."

"A bit."

"Well, you know what? I don't. They just freak me out."

"You're a smart man, Robert."

"Uh-uh. You know I'm a digger for sarcasms."

"I wasn't sarcastic." Daniel stared at his boots. The scratch was still there. "I panicked. I didn't tell the others. Okay, I told Jack. A little."

"She petrified you. That's a good reason to panic."

"No. This fear was physical. I couldn't help it, and it could have killed me, but at the same time it didn't feel as bad as when I couldn't communicate. Imagine that, imagine me, unable to talk or read, or translate languages"

"Nightmarish."

"Yeah."

Robert coughed. He sat at the table and put his chin on his fist. "It's over."

"What if I get aphasia, later? You know, when I grow older, or if I have an accident?"

"Yeah, that could happen. I just don't think you'll grow old enough for that."

Daniel opened his eyes wide. "This is not what I needed to hear."

"I know, sorry. I'm not good with that crap. You should go ask O'Neill, he's better than me."

"Better? That's the guy who wanted to kill you for no good reason only a couple of days ago."

"I'm not you. Just go."

Daniel looked at the door. "I might just do that."

"You will? Could you do something for me then?"

"What?"

"Punch him. Take him on the ring and knock him out. I would do it myself, but _I_ want to have a chance to become senile one day."

A few years ago, had someone told Daniel he would like hitting a bag and prefer punching a man, he would have laughed. But Jack had taught him that working up a sweat was a good way to deal with all this meaning of life stuff that kept trotting through his brain. And working up a sweat with someone else was even better.

Daniel cracked his fingers and smirked. "You know what? I'll definitely do that."

After all, they still had an argument or two to settle.


End file.
